My First Rejection
I just received my first ever official story rejection! How exciting!
Thank you for submitting your story, "Derek", to the Mundane-SF Interzone issue on 2007-10-31. It was a fun one, but unfortunately is not for us. We seem to have received a lot of stories whose plot turns on the suicide of a character in one form or another. Best of luck with it elsewhere.I honestly didn't expect people to be this nice about this kind of thing. It's quite cheering.
Note to self: In future avoid common subjects such as suicide 
. Hmmmm. Perhaps teenage pregancy for my next one...
Inspiration Hits
Ideas change shape. The more you work with them the more they become these slippery, shifting things. This is a good and bad thing because you need to shoe horn your ideas into specific slots in order to turn them into stories. Often your mind will run so far with an idea that it no longer fits into the place you'd set aside for it. Sometimes an idea will run so far that you need to clip it's wings, maybe tear off a lump of flesh or two, just... you know... to keep it in line? Sometimes... sometimes... when you cut an idea down to size it will suddenly fit perfectly into a place you hadn't planned for it. That just happened. I'm happier... for now...
Ideas Crisis
All I need is an idea for a film. It's got to be ten minutes long and heavy on the visuals. How hard should this be? So far I've come up with three ideas.
- A story I was quite into where the main plot device has (rightfully so) pointed to be the "lynx effect"
- A ghost story come action film come statement about violence that was just plain bad.
- A workplace story that ended up being so abstract as to be silly.
Ugh. All I want is an idea that I like and could make work.
Pay Attention!
This is a message to myself to make sure that I write down absolutely everything. I was chatting to one of my coursemates in the bar last night and we discussed our script homework. Turns out I'd written a scene without one of the components that had been asked for (fear!). Yay for staying up till stupid o'clock redoing homework when you're absolutely exhausted.
Also: Get your arse in gear and start working on that essay. You know what you're like...
Thinking More
Reading through these textbooks is great. It's pointing out to me exactly what I don't do. I take shortcuts. Take one character for example. He's leaving town. He's leaving everything he's ever known. I know exactly what he's feeling at this time. I know exactly has happened in the last couple of days to make him feel this way. But things are never that simple. If he'd had a certain experience earlier in his life then he may have been able to better cope with recent events and not end up leaving town. It's the absence of that singular strengthening event that's really the root cause of this situation.
I write in the moment. I feel what my characters feel but I don't give enough consideration to the events that enabled them to feel that way. This is what the textbooks are showing me and it only takes a little push, a few mental clues. I'm already thinking more. That's what's so great.
Unconscious Competence
So I'm in the gym last night. It's Wednesday. That means swiss ball. It's also the instructors birthday so today is officially a fun class, with lots of balance work. It's been quite a while since I went in the gym itself and did a strength workout so it's also a fair while since I've practised my balancing. Well it turns out that balancing on a space hopper without handles is much like riding a bike. Yeah. Bear with me. I mean it's something your body doesn't forget how to do. Your muscles remember which way they need to pull without you having to tell them. As we kneel in a circle and throw foam tennis balls between us I realise my stomach has locked up and I'm swaying slightly. I'm also staying on the ball when I have to move my gaze away from a fixed point in order to follow the trajectory of a tennis ball. That's unconscious competence.
That's where I need to get to with my writing and just like balancing on a swiss ball it's going to take months of practice. If I fall off in the meantime that's fine. It's all good learning.
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Personality vs. Critique
Okay so I'm told (and I whole-heartedly agree) that having your own voice as a writer is critically important. I'm pretty sure I've got mine... or at least I thought I had.
I have to wonder exactly how much critique from others affects the way my work flows. I like to think my prose has a certain rhythm to it. I tend to favour short, sharp sentences, followed by longer, softer turns of phrase. Does that make sense? I don't really care. Anyway. I have to wonder about the way in which that flow changes when you take the advice of other people. When I edit other people's work my opinion is always affected by my own opinion of how a sentence should flow and I always offer critique with that as part of the disclaimer, "Don't take this as writ. It's contaminated by the voice of another writer."
It's a real skill (and one that I'm working hard to develop) to edit another person's work based on the style of the piece as it stands. When it comes to integrating other people's opinions into your work it's a real balancing act. Do you sacrifice that turn of phrase that you think is just perfect, because one (and only one) of your friends thinks it doesn't quite read right. Is it something your other friends didn't pick up on? If you pointed it out to them would they then agree with your detractor (used in the nicest possible way)? Do you want to take that risk?
So yeah. Writing. Editing. Taking criticism. Integrating...
Subjective balancing act or pollution of your voice?